


Opposite to the Sun

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Susan after her family's death, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22546732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: Susan does not cry, when she is told.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Opposite to the Sun

Susan does not cry, when she is told.

Susan hears the police officer tell her the details, the need for documents, proof of identity. There is a terrible racket in the background where the police is, and she can barely make out the words: she feels terrible for having to make the police officer repeat his terrible, dreadful words. By the second time she knows that she must have answered, because the man repeats again how sorry he is before he hangs up. Susan hangs up and tries to remember how to move without breaking down into pieces, but she rather feels like porcelain that has been put together again, and one strong wind might be enough to shatter her. 

The kettle's whistle is what brings her back from the place where she now inhabits. She takes a breath, turns around and takes the kettle off, considerings simply leaving it to cool down, then reconsiders and pours herself a cup of tea. Chamomile with mint, since it's calming and she will need her calm. She does put the bisquets away. 

She makes a list with a barely-trembling hand as she drinks her tea, the only noise the scratch of her pencil against the paper and the tick tock of the grandfather clock. Call her dad's office, call Bobby (her beau), call Peter's girlfriend, Edmund's school, Lucy's school, call her aunt. She doesn't own any black dresses and she doesn't think any of her skirts are proper for this, she'll have to take one of her mum's. Call her father's lawyer, also the bank. How much do funeral services cost, anyway?

She drinks her tea, stands up and makes herself another cup with the leftover lukewarm water, and she sips from it between phone calls. By the time she calls her beau, she has finished her tea and her boyfriend promises to be there in an hour, "Don't worry, Suze, I'll take care of the tickets for the train, alright?" and she says alright quietly. 

Susan doesn't allow herself to think as she picks up clothes for her family. Daddy's favorite tie of course isn't there because he took it with him, but Susan rather prefered the color of the blue one anyway, and the pale pink dress that her mum almost never wore because she thought the cut of it was for a younger woman, but Susan always thought it made her look lovely. Lucy should have worn more the light green dress that Susan gave her because it complimented her so well, even if Lucy tended to prefer blue. Blue like the blue at the coronation. For one long moment she allows herself the fantasy that she's dressing her family up for something else, what they would have worn if she was to say yes if (when) Bobby proposes. 

She still hasn't cried. She feels dried up inside, frozen like, and briefly wonders if this is how the White Witch was perhaps made, if something like this is what broke her and froze her and rebuilt her. Probably not, Susan thinks, but even the slight comparison makes her reconsider things that she had forgotten. Things that she _told_ herself and her siblings and anyone who'd care to listen that she had absolutely forgotten and she never, actually, forgot.

Once she has her family's clothes and the documents she was requested to bring, Susan changes out from her pretty grey dress, putting it away carefully, thinking of Narnia and the days when they'd had to go to battle, the way she'd carefully put on layer after layer of her armor and rather considers this day to be a battle, these clothes her armor. She puts on stockings, her mum's dress, puts aside the one pair of black gloves she owns. She carefully combs her hair into something practical: it's going to be, she thinks, a rather long day, and it won't do to have something that will get on the way. Small, sensible earrings, the necklace her daddy gave her for her last birthday. 

For a moment she hesitates over make up but then she squares her jaw, picks up her foundation and starts applying the last layer to her armour. Her siblings didn't understand this, that her silks and rouges and lipsticks are also another armour. She won't cry if she has mascara on. And with a little of blush no-one will have to know how pale she is, how her skin has surely turned into ice, into porcelain, and how she's not certain her heart is still beating. That under all of her silks and paints she is a thing of ragged, broken pieces. 

When she looks in the mirror Susan finds herself quite satisfied. She looks like a queen.

And, from this day on, that will have to do.


End file.
